


Justice Falls From Grace

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Murder, Redemption, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21648844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: Olivia Benson had no idea that the horrendously cold February afternoon when Rafael Barba forehead-kissed her goodbye and wouldn’t let her sayI love youwasn’t yet the worst of it, wasn’t yet the worst of Rafael Barba.[Character tags are incomplete because if I tag all the characters I spoil most of the plot]
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Olivia Benson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

Olivia Benson had no idea that the horrendously cold February afternoon when Rafael Barba forehead-kissed her goodbye and wouldn’t let her say _I love you_ wasn’t yet the worst of it, wasn’t yet the worst of Rafael Barba.

In July, when humidity thickened New York City’s air and the courts were strangely quiet, Benson learned that Jack McCoy had filed murder charges against a man who’d flipped a life support switch on an infant dying of Tay Sachs disease. The child’s parents were now divorcing following a months-long right-to-die battle. The man who’d flipped the switch was a longtime family friend. This second murder charge unsettled Benson.

It unsettled the governor and state Attorney General too. By August, they were demanding an investigation into why McCoy had filed murder charges twice in five months when there was no precedent. 

Jack McCoy stepped down a week before the Attorney General revealed that the Manhattan DA’s office and McCoy’s most recent re-election campaign had been receiving donations from Not My Decision, an organization seeking to take end-of-life decision-making out of the hands of everyone other than a supernatural higher power. McCoy and the smug ADA that SVU had been stuck with after Barba’s departure had both been corrupted by money, and maybe also by the sense of power someone might acquire from denying rights to their own constituents.

The man who’d flipped the life support switch was working with Not My Decision, and McCoy and the SVU ADA had promised to protect him from harsh sentencing if he was found guilty.. Not My Decision would pay him handsomely when he got out of prison after a year, as long as the charges stuck, as long as they were able to set a precedent that they could carry all the way up to the Supreme Court someday.

In the moments before Benson fully registered the implications of McCoy’s downfall, she was relieved that ADA “That’s Not Rape” was out of their hair at last.

And then it hit her like a punch to the stomach: if the man who’d flipped the switch on his family friend’s infant was a willing participant in Not My Decision’s attempts to force justice’s hands, then so was Barba. 

Probably.

Or maybe not. 

She’d known Barba for years, they’d been best friends, essentially, platonic soulmates who sometimes indulged in brief too-meaningful flared-eye glances, but they _knew_ each other, and until February, generally trusted each other.

A few days after the Attorney General’s revelations, Benson learned that Barba had been disbarred and was facing corruption charges himself. He’d bene approached by Not My Decision months before SVU ever encountered the Householders, before the baby was born. They’d asked him to be a part of their plan to change the laws in New York City, and after that, the whole country.

Barba admitted to everything. Rita Calhoun was working on a plea deal on his behalf. 

Benson was terrified that he’d be killed on the inside, after he’d taken on the corrections officers who’d rallied around the rapist, domestic abuser, and murderer Gary Munson a few years back. 

Perhaps miraculously, Barba survived his 90-day sentence.

Benson was almost certain that Barba had been blackmailed or threatened, because he didn’t believe in any of what Not My Decision was selling, not their ideology, and certainly not their methods of working the courts. Unless she’d spectacularly misjudged him; that possibility was of course on the table as well.

She saw him one winter afternoon when she was in the state courthouse after testifying on a case that had started in Manhattan. Barba was gaunt, his skin sallow, his torso sunk in to a now-oversized sweater vest, white dress shirt and gray sportcoat. He shivered in spite of all the layers.

A small part of her wanted to comfort him, but every other inch of her skin and bones and soul knew it was wiser not to.

“Liv,” he said, “have dinner with me tonight. I’ll explain.”

She looked directly into his darkened eyes and answered “no.”

“That’s fair.”

“Good.” She nodded, matter-of-factly, and started back down the hall, immediately noticing that he was tentatively trailing her. “Stop,” she ordered. “Let me walk away.”

He did.

Later that night, well after Noah’s bedtime but long before sunrise, she curled up under the covers and sobbed like she hadn’t sobbed in years. She suppressed the sounds in her throat, clutching fiercely at the comforter, knowing she had so, so little to hold on to anymore.

—

“It was funny,” Rollins would tell her after Carisi’s going-away-but-not-going-away party, “Carisi told me he still practices Barba’s summations in the mirror.”

“Who?” Benson said, raising an eyebrow.

Rollins flattened her lips. “He’s in Miami, working for the Innocence Collective down there.”

“He was corrupt.”

“You don’t know the whole story,” Rollins said.

“Tell me something, Amanda,” Benson said, turning to face the detective, “if I knew the whole story, would it change the fact that Barba willingly participated in a corruption scheme paid for by Not My Decision?”

Rollins thought about that for a moment. “Probably not.”

“You don’t think I know about the Masuccis?” Benson said softly. “You think a commanding officer would be that out of the loop? Barba owed the Masuccis. His father —”

“— who was a real bastard —”

“—left all his money to his secret family in the will. All he’d made from holding down the ports in the Bronx. I’ve been a detective for a long time. So I also know that Barba made bad choices, however desperate they might have been.”

“Well.”

The single syllable conveyed a decade of Rollins’s own bad choices. 

“It’s different,” Benson insisted. 

“He and his mother lived in an apartment in a row house in the South Bronx where the two houses on either side of them were burned out, set on fire by the owners for insurance money who didn’t care about the safety of anybody who lived next door. Meanwhile his dad was raking in money from the mob, keeping his secret family comfortable and warm in a house on Long Island.”

“I know all of this, and it doesn’t change the fact that Barba went to the Masuccis for help.”

“Because he and his mother deserved that money after all his father put them through.”

“But he didn’t come to me when the Masuccis came to collect on their favor,” Benson said, gritting her teeth in agitation. “He went through with it. He used _my unit_ to pay back the mob.”

“He had no —”

“Yes he did. He could have come to me.”

“And what would you have done?”

“I have connections to the feds. I’d have helped him.”

Rollins shrugged. “You’d have saved him.”

“Amanda,” Benson said, sighing shallowly, “I know I’m no one’s savior.”

—

A week before Christmas, when SVU was understaffed as always, and Rollins had just returned to work after she’d been kidnapped by a retired officer whose desperation for justice had sent him spiraling off the rails, Rollins and Fin were investigating the scene of an attempted child abduction near the Manhattan side of the 59th Street Bridge.

The dark circles under Rollins’s eyes extended almost all the way down to her chin. 

“Parents had a bad divorce, custodial assholery is statistically the most likely explanation,” Rollins said, peering over the rail and looking at the East River beneath her. “It’s really unlikely —”

She cut herself off when she noticed a figure beneath the water, slowly rising up with the tide.

A body. A man’s body, blue and green and swollen.

“Floater,” Rollins said flatly.

“I’ll call it in,” Fin told her.

“So this means we’ll be here all afternoon.”

“Probably has nothing to do with our case.”

“Even so.” Rollins rubbed her eyes. “I might have to testify about where I found the body.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Can’t help it. My therapist said that after you’ve actually seen the worst case scenario, experienced it, especially more than once, your brain rewires, your mind catastrophizes.”

“So, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

A homicide detective from the 27th Precinct showed up within the hour, but they had to wait another two hours for a dive team and hope the current wouldn’t carry their floater away.

“You need us for anything?” Fin started to say as the divers laid the body on the ground in front of the homicide detective and a medical examiner. But when he looked down, he drew in a breath, almost a gasp, and cursed to himself. 

“I used to work with this guy,” Fin said.

“Shot in the chest, probably at close range,” the ME observed. “Might have been tossed into the river while he was taking his last breaths.”

“Who is he?” the detective asked Fin.

“Elliot Stabler. Former SVU detective, retired about nine years ago.”

Rollins covered her mouth with one hand. She’d never met Stabler — he’d suddenly taken leave about a month before she arrived in New York, and officially retired after her first major case — but knew enough to understand that this would devastate Benson. 

Fin looked sideways at Rollins. “I’ve got to get back to the precinct,” he said. “Got to break this to Liv before anybody else does.”

—

“We’re not doing this in an interview room,” Lieutenant Kevin Bernard said when Benson arrived at the 27th Precinct three days after Stabler’s body was found floating in the East River.

For the last 65 hours or so, Benson had been shivering a lot, staring, but not crying. Her eyes were, in fact, dryer than usual. 

Bernard led her to his office at the back of the precinct and shut the door.

He was known as one of the smartest homicide detectives in the city, now commanding officer for one of the top homicide units, and Benson was certain that the reason she was there was that Bernard had unearthed Benson and Stabler’s brief affair nineteen years ago, when she was grieving and he was selfish.

“I understand that you need to work all angles,” Benson told Bernard as she settled into a chair opposite his desk.

“It’s too bad. Stabler was a good detective way back when. Seems like he was less discerning about who he worked for as a private investigator.”

“What?” Benson asked.

“Obviously being a good detective yourself, you knew.”

She had no idea what Bernard was talking about, but recognized the technique: he was expecting her to fill in details and admit to complicity in something related to Stabler’s murder.

“Lieutenant,” she said, laying both hands flat on his desk, “I have not heard from Elliot in more than eight years. Kathy sent me Christmas cards for the first few years after Elliot left, and then she stopped. I think they’re divorced, but I don’t even know that much. What is it you think —”

“Stabler was working for Not My Decision.”

Benson let out another “What?” followed by a shaking breath and thirty seconds of silence.

“Lieutenant,” she said, “I had no idea. I will sign a sworn affidavit for you. I have not spoken to Elliot Stabler in more than eight years, and I have not spoken to Rafael Barba in almost three, except for once around last year at this time when I ran into him in court.”

“And what did Mr. Barba have to say then?”

Nausea rose up into Benson’s throat. The two-seven hadn’t called her in for questioning because of her connection to, or her brief affair with, Stabler; they’d called her in because Stabler had been working for Not My Decision, the shady advocacy group that had allegedly used Masucci connections to sacrifice an ADA in service of their ideological cause.

They’d called her in because Stabler’s murder may have been related to the PI work he’d done for Not My Decision, and Not My Decision was responsible for Barba’s downfall.

They’d called her in because some 72 hours into their investigation, their primary suspect was — must have been — Rafael Barba.

“What did he have to say when you last saw him?” Bernard prompted.

“Nothing,” Benson told him, swallowing hard, willing her voice not to break. “He wanted to explain himself. I walked away.”


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as Bernard was finally satisfied that she knew nothing about Stabler’s link to Not My Decision, and therefore nothing about a possible connection between him and Barba, Benson returned her focus to work and Noah’s afterschool activities, shutting out all her concerns about the case that NYPD was desperate to make against Barba, a case strong enough to get a warrant that would extradite him from Florida. 

The morning of Christmas Eve, Benson was at work, hunched over Rollins’s desk as they squinted at crime scene photos together, when she wondered if it would be in poor taste to visit Kathy Stabler with genuine condolences.

She’d learned from Bernard that Kathy had finally kicked Elliot out for good six years ago. 

But Kathy was tasked with planning the funeral, which couldn’t take place until the ME released her ex-husband’s body.

That was where Benson’s sympathies lay.

An elbow nudged Benson’s arm. Startled, she straightened her spine and found Rita Calhoun next to her. Rollins let out a low, annoyed hum.

“You think he did it?” Calhoun asked bluntly.

“Who?” Benson said, her go-to response these days when anybody asked her about Rafael Barba. 

“My client.”

Rollins smirked. “We deal with lots of your clients around here, Ms. Calhoun. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You find this funny?” Calhoun snapped.

“No, ma’am, that’s just the tone I take on when somebody pisses off my commanding officer.”

“I’m heading home to be with my son,” Benson told Calhoun, “and this is not the place —”

“Let’s go to your office, then.”

“Nor the time,” she continued, perhaps a bit too loudly given how many heads turned in the squadroom.

“Olivia,” Calhoun said, no less harshly. “I’m worried.”

Benson let out an exasperated sigh. “You have five minutes.”

Calhoun followed Benson to her office. Benson shut the door behind them, but neither woman sat down. 

“You have five minutes,” Benson repeated.

“So, again: do you think he did it?”

“Do you?”

“I’m his attorney. I’m not allowed to answer that, and I’m sworn to defend him regardless of what I think.”

“What do you want from me? I’ll tell you what I told Bernard: I know nothing about Not My Decision, other than that they’re Masucci-linked, which all of NYPD and the feds have known ever since your college buddy went down for corruption.”

Calhoun dropped her bag onto the couch beneath the window. “Olivia.”

Benson shook her head and bit her lip. “I can’t,” she said, “I can’t.”

“You didn’t hear it from me, but the feds picked up Stabler a few weeks after McCoy went down. He made a deal with them in exchange for no jail time. Became an informant, was supposed to testify against the NMD folks.”

“So he was supposed to testify against an organization connected to the Masuccis.”

“Yep.”

“Then you’ve got your reasonable doubt, clear as day. Merry Christmas.”

“Not quite,” Calhoun said.

“Is this really something I need to know?”

“As his former best friend and confidant who he was in love with for years, yes, it is. Homicide’s theory is that Raf killed Stabler for the Masuccis. Bernard and company supposedly got partial DNA from under Stabler’s fingernails. There was a struggle. They were mano a mano before the killer shot Stabler through the heart.” 

“So the DNA will exonerate Rafael.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“You said it’s only partial, so the best they’ll be able to get is a partial match anyway. I’ve been framed with DNA evidence, long before we knew you and Rafael’s names here in Manhattan. It’s —”

“Good,” Calhoun said, “then you don’t believe he did it.”

“I don’t believe Rafael is capable of murder, but until two and a half years ago, I didn’t believe he was capable — morally, ethically, in any way — of doing what he did with NMD and the courts, and his career.”

“You know what Rafael Sr. put him through as a kid.”

“How is that an excuse?”

“For murder, it’s not. But for going to the Masuccis to make sure his mother was taken care of —”

“And how does Lucia feel about this?” Benson asked.

“Hasn’t spoken to him in almost three years.”

Reflexively, her heart sunk for Barba with a sympathy that repulsed her well-trained detective mind.

Calhoun caught Benson’s far-off stare. “He doesn’t have anyone on his side anymore.”

“He has you.”

“I’m his attorney.”

“You’re his friend. You’ve known him much longer than I have.”

“Lately, it’s hard to be his friend,” Calhoun admitted.

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” Calhoun said, without a hint of sarcasm.

“In which case, I’m going home to spend Christmas Eve with my son.”

—

Benson didn’t go straight home. Instead, she hopped on an eastbound R train to visit Kathy Stabler in the home she and Elliot had once shared, a home where Benson had once between a frequent guest in spite of her secret transgression with her onetime partner. 

On the way, she worried for a second that she was the last person Kathy wanted to see.

But Kathy, a thousand years of exhaustion written on her face, embraced Benson and welcomed her into her home as she always had.

They made small talk around sympathy for a minute, and then Kathy led Benson to the living room, where Maureen sat cross-legged on the floor with a dark-haired, laughing toddler, trying to convince the little girl to sit with her and watch the animated holiday special on tv. Kathleen sat on the couch. Both daughters, now in their thirties, seemed just as exhausted as their mother. 

Horrific as Stabler’s murder was, Benson wondered what he’d left in his wake, what he’d left behind in this living room.

“Olivia,” Kathleen said, standing and hurrying over to embrace Benson.

She clung to Benson almost desperately, and so Benson embraced her tighter.

Maureen offered a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, and introduced her daughter Nadia. “This is Lieutenant Benson,” she said.

“Captain,” Kathy corrected.

“Like on a boat!” the three-year-old exclaimed. 

“In half of children’s cartoons, the grandfather is a ship captain,” Kathleen said with a gentle laugh. 

“So, yes, like on a boat,” Benson said, and that brought a smile to the Stabler women’s lips. 

In the kitchen, Kathy told Benson that the ME’s office had finally given her clearance to plan the funeral. She went to make some phone calls, and Kathleen grabbed her coat and offered to walk Benson back to her car.

“Talk to me,” Benson said, sensing that was what Kathleen needed.

“You know,” Kathleen said, holding back tears, “I’m a clinical social worker today because of you. That time you brought me in to help a teenager who was abused by her boyfriend, and everything I’ve seen you do to help people get back on their feet, that’s what made me want to get my MSW.” She sniffled, then smiled at Benson. “I just thought it was important to tell you that, to let you know what you’ve meant to me.”

“Kathleen, sweetheart, that means so much.” Benson reached out to embrace her again. “I’m proud of you.”

“I don’t know what happened with Dad the last ten years or so,” Kathleen told her. “He didn’t take care of himself, and, hey, almost everyone’s parents around here have kind of gone off the rails in the last ten years, you can tell by scrolling through Facebook for thirty seconds.”

“What is it?” Benson asked. “Do you know something about your father that can help Lieutenant Bernard solve his murder?”

Kathleen shook her head. “Nothing I haven’t told him already. Four years ago, Maureen got pregnant by a drug dealer she was sleeping with, and when Dad found out she was considering abortion — the guy didn’t want to be involved and Maureen was already in debt from student loans — he lost his shit. That was how I found out he was working for those Not My Decision people. I was worried about Maureen, so I did some digging. We’d always had differences of opinion on certain things, but he really doubled down the last few years. I love my niece, but I worry about Maureen, who’s working a full-time job, a part-time job, and doing some sales stuff online to make ends meet, and I wonder to what degree Dad bullied her into making the decision she did.” 

Benson considered whether she herself was what had kept Stabler from following his worst instincts all those years. 

Dr. Lindstrom would probably tell her that it was Stabler’s fault for putting her into that role. In fact, the clinical social worker standing with her in the driveway would probably tell her the same thing. 

“Are you living her now?” Benson asked.

“I moved back in after Maureen had Nadia. Mom and Dad were already divorced, Eli’s still a kid, the twins don’t want anything to do with Mom and Dad anymore — and I get that, but —”

Benson laid a hand on Kathleen’s shoulder. “It’s hard to grieve for someone you didn’t like.”

Kathleen nodded. “Freud’s _Mourning and Melancholia_. He’s entirely irrelevant in clinical practice, except for that.”

“Listen,” Benson said, “you need to take care of yourself. You deserve a life of your own, a life outside of having to take care of Stablers.”

—

On Christmas Eve, Barba flew in from Miami. He went to his mother, who he hadn’t spoken to in two years, and broke the news that he would probably be arrested before New Year’s Day, on account of some sort of partial DNA match that wouldn’t hold water in court.

He could read the heartbreak in Lucia’s eyes. “Did you kill someone for the mob?” she asked. “Because that’s what everyone’s been saying. Even your father wouldn’t have killed anybody for them.”

Barba’s heart sank, but he flattened his expression. “I was 29 years old and you and I had just emptied our pockets keeping a man we hated on life support because that’s what he would have wanted.”

“You were a lawyer. You could have gone through the courts.”

“To recover Papi’s well-laundered Masucci money?”

“And get yourself an Upper East Side apartment and a closet full of nice suits.”

“Maybe we deserved something nice, you and I, after all the broken bones.”

“Thank god abuelita didn’t know how you really got Papi’s money. Thank god she died thinking you’d be a judge someday. I hope she can’t find out what you’ve become.”

“Mami,” Barba said, struggling to suppress a sob, though he couldn’t flatten the pleading in his voice. “I’m not him.” Again, in a cracked whisper: “I’m not him.”

“So you’re going to be arrested for murder a second time in less than three years.”

“It won’t stick. The DNA match is partial. We know I have a half-brother and half-sister from Papi’s other family, and they could have kids in their twenties. They could each have five kids who could have murdered Stabler, or the partial match could turn out to be forensic bullshit. That plus the fact that I’ve been living in Miami for —”

“I don’t care,” was all Lucia said, and she shut the door on him. 

—- 

Barba spent Christmas with room service in a hotel in downtown Brooklyn. The next day, on his way to Rita Calhoun’s office — they decided that if he was going to be arrested, he might as well be arrested in his defense attorney’s presence — he stopped outside the 16th Precinct. 

Of course sauntering by a police precinct when he was anticipating an arrest probably wasn’t the wisest idea. 

He saw Benson when she emerged for her morning coffee and pastry from the cart parked outside. Benson caught Barba’s gaze just as she reached for the coffee cup and brown paper bag that the man inside the cart was handing her. 

She stopped in her tracks, flinching before finally taking the cup and the bag. 

In her eyes, he saw fear.

A flash, a split second of fear before she blinked, shook her head, and walked away, back into the precinct. 

If he was sentenced to hell, this was the reason why. Not because he’d asked middle-management Masuccis for help getting the money he and his mother deserved, but because he had put new fear into Olivia Benson’s eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

Barba sat in Rita Calhoun’s office, leaning back in a swivel chair, his feet up on the corner of her desk, crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. “I have to get my law license back,” he said, his tone absent-minded but somehow determined. 

Calhoun let out a laugh that was mostly a sarcastic burst of air. “You’re going to be arrested for murder this afternoon or tomorrow morning, and you’re sitting here saying you have to get your law license back?”

“I’d rather not think about being arrested.” 

“Raf.”

“Now, as soon as the charges against me are dropped, I can write a letter asking to appear before the New York State Bar and —”

“You can argue all you want, but you served ninety days for corruption. Corruption connected to your job as an assistant district attorney … oh.” She paused, leaned back in her office chair, and clicked her tongue. “This is about —”

“My career,” Barba insisted.

“Did you see Olivia?”

“No,” he said, quickly catching himself in a lie and, not wanting to lie anymore, added, “I saw her. We didn’t talk.”

“You’re never getting back in her good graces. I’m sorry, Raf, maybe — _maybe_ — you’re being punished more than you deserved, but you betrayed her trust in order to commit a felony. There’s no moral reason for her to forgive you, and if I were her, I wouldn’t.”

“Thank you for your support.”

“What I mean is, forgiveness is not necessarily a good thing, especially when —”

“Especially when I did what I did. I understand.”

Barba had tried to prepare himself for his inevitable arrest, to tamp down his sense of terror at having to return to prison, especially if the arraignment judge thought he really was a danger to the remaining Stablers or anyone else, but when the detectives showed up in Calhoun’s office, warrant in hand, he froze, panicked, fully unprepared in spite of himself.

“You got your warrant on partial DNA,” Calhoun said. “That won’t hold up in court. My client’s father had other children, and besides —”

“Argue it in front of the arraignment judge.”

“I will. And you’re taking him to arraignment court right now.”

“Sorry, ma’am, we’re taking him to Rikers until a judge becomes available,” one of the detectives said as he handcuffed Barba, who struggled not to shudder. “It’s the last week of the year. Lots of judges are on vacation.”

Calhoun followed the detectives and her client to the elevator bank. “So you waited until an afternoon when half the judges are on vacation to arrest Mr. Barba, who very likely has a considerable degree of post-traumatic distress from —”

“Ma’am, we can’t help you.”

Barba shivered. He wished he could pass out and wake up four years ago, or just — pass out — until the world felt real again, until he wasn’t corrupt anymore, until he wasn’t unforgivable.

—

They didn’t take him to arraignment until the next morning, when he arrived in the same clothes he’d worn the day before: gray wool trousers, now dirty and wrinkled, a white dress shirt, also impossibly wrinkled, and a gray sport coat. His cheeks and chin were shaded with stubble and his eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t eaten or slept. 

“Can I at least get my client cleaned up?” Calhoun asked.

The ADA, who couldn’t have been a day over thirty, and the judge, whose plate was overloaded with arraignments, both agreed that they didn’t have time to wait.

At the defense table, Calhoun briefly laid a hand on Barba’s back. “You’ll be all right,” she promised, a small hint of friendship reaching through the hell he’d brought upon himself.

“Don’t let them send me back,” he pleaded under his breath.

For the first time in decades, he saw Rita Calhoun flinch with worry.

“Motion to drop all charges,” Calhoun said loudly, handing the ADA and the judge copies of the motion which she must have spent all night working on. “Mr. Barba has been charged solely on the basis of a partial DNA match which won’t be admissible as evidence at trial.”

“But it is sufficient to charge him with the crime,” the ADA said.

“Says who? There’s no precedent.”

The judge took a minute to review the motion. “She’s right,” he said, tilting his head toward Calhoun. “Counselor, I’m overturning the original warrant and invite you to come see me when you have admissible evidence.”

Barba breathed out.

Calhoun laid a hand on his back again and led them both into the hall. “We’re going to dig up an alternate theory,” she promised. “This buys me some time. All we need is reasonable doubt. I’m just glad I won’t have to do this work while you’re in a cell. Raf?”

He stared ahead, down the hall, at the elevator where he’d once been threatened by a gang member hired by the COs union.

Meanwhile, a familiar face rounded the corner: ADA Sonny Carisi.

“Rafael.” He stood in front of his former mentor, looking down at him, then over Barba’s shoulder at Calhoun. “Motion went through?”

“Yes,” Calhoun told him.

“Thank God.”

Barba took two deep breaths and, still struggling to feel solid ground beneath him, half-smiled at Carisi. 

“I need to get home — well, Rita’s place, home’s Miami these days — but, I hear where you belong now, ADA Carisi.”

Carisi shuffled his feet. “SVU’s not the same without you.”

Barba reached out and patted Carisi’s arm through his suit jacket. The material beneath his hand brought him back to reality, mostly. “You’ll do fine,” Barba promised. “You’ll do remarkably, I know it.”

“And you’ll be back in the courtroom soon. As an attorney, I mean.”

Barba closed his eyes. “Sure.”

“Ms. Calhoun tells me you’ve been working for the Innocence Collective.”

“For other people’s redemption, not mine. I served ninety days in prison for corruption, and I was guilty.”

“Can we not admit to guilt inside the courthouse?” Calhoun prompted, nudging him. 

“I’m only referring to —”

“It’s all right,” Carisi interrupted. “I’ve got to get to an arraignment myself.”

“Really, then, congratulations. You worked hard for this, Carisi. You deserve all of it.”

—

It was already after six and as Benson worked in her dimly lit office, she wasn’t sure if she’d be home before 8. 

She heard a knock on the window that opened into the squadroom and saw Carisi standing there. Removing her glasses, she beckoned him inside.

“What now?” she asked. “Tell me good news.”

“Charges were dropped against Barba for now on insufficient evidence. Homicide has to go back to the drawing board.”

Benson shrugged. “When I said _tell me good news_ , I meant, don’t come here to talk about Barba.”

“Got it, Captain. I’m here to talk about me.”

She raised one eyebrow.

“Hypothetically,” Carisi said, waving one finger in the air almost comically, but she could see how nervous he was, “purely hypothetical situation, how bad is it if a detective sleeps with somebody who they shouldn’t be sleeping with, but calls it off before it gets too ethically iffy?”

“I told you not to come here to talk to me about Barba.” 

“No — no, no, no, Captain, I’m not referring to Barba.” 

“Ethically iffy?” she said, quoting him.

“Maybe I picked up a couple of, uh, turns of phrase from him, but this has nothing to do with Barba.”

“I was involved with an ADA once, before you transferred in,” Benson said. “Poor choice, we almost destroyed a case, but neither of us were officially reprimanded. We might have narrowly escaped it, but — you said you called it off.”

“A long time ago.”

“What’re you so worried about?”

“With all these ADAs getting charged with corruption —”

“Sounds like you did something stupid, not corrupt. It’s okay, Carisi. It happens to the best of us. An ethical transgression like that isn’t going to bite you in the ass now.” She smiled at him, trying to be reassuring, but his eyes still sloped with worry.

“Yeah, so, hypothetically, what if it wasn’t an ADA, or detective, or officer, or — nobody on NYPD, nobody in the courts.”

Benson paused to consider. “Don’t tell me you slept with a suspect,” she said, incredulous. “One of _our_ suspects?”

“Hypothetically.”

“Sonny, don’t —”

“He wasn’t a suspect anymore when we got together. He was cleared.”

“Okay.” Benson pursed her lips. “Okay, that’s not so bad.”

“But there’s more.”

Benson rubbed her temples. “I promise, if he was cleared when you got together, and you ended it, it was a stupid ethical transgression, nothing more. Nothing you’ll lose your job over.”

“Yeah.”

“What Barba did was clear-cut corruption. Is that why you’re so —”

“Paranoid?”

“Don’t worry, Sonny. I promise you, you’re where you belong.”

Carisi laughed, half to himself. “Funny, Barba said something similar today.”

“How many times do I have to ask you —”

“Not to talk to you about Barba. My apologies.”

“I’m glad they dropped the charges, though. He must have been terrified to have to spend the night in jail.”

“Yeah,” Carisi said, nodding, “he looked it.”

—

Benson had just put Noah to bed — relieved somewhat that he hadn’t asked any new questions about Barba — when her cell phone rang in her hand. The screen read _Kathleen_ ; they’d exchanged numbers in the driveway on Christmas Eve afternoon.

“Kathleen?” Benson asked, alarmed.

“Olivia, I’m sorry to bother you so late. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing urgent, I mean. I’m in my office and —”

“In Manhattan?”

“Yes.” 

“Why don’t you come over? We can talk.” She sensed that Kathleen didn’t want to return home quite so soon, considering that she was calling from her office at 9 o’clock at night during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. 

Within the half hour, she was at Benson’s door.

“I don’t feel comfortable disclosing family secrets when it’s not for the sake of mandated reporting,” Kathleen said when they were seated together on the couch, “but I’m worried about my sister, and I’m worried about your friend.”

“My friend?”

“Mr. Barba. I heard he was released this morning but they’re going to try to file charges again. I don’t think he killed my dad.”

“Did you talk to Lieutenant Bernard?”

“Yes,” Kathleen said, chewing nervously on her lower lip, “but not really. When he came to talk to us, he didn’t talk to me and Maureen separately, and Maureen didn’t tell him anything about how her daughter’s father is threatening to sue her for partial custody if she takes him to court for child support. He’s a drug dealer, he can’t take care of a kid, and even he knows that. This is just about revenge. When I confronted Maureen after Bernard left, she said I’d better not say anything. Mom doesn’t know about the custody issue, but I think Dad might have.”

“Lieutenant Bernard must have looked into that. We always look for custodial disputes when we’re investigating murder.”

“They were arguing, Maureen and Nadia’s father, but they hadn’t taken it to court yet. He’s not on her birth certificate. There are no records.”

Benson sighed and leaned back into the couch. “You have to tell Bernard about this.”

“I know.”

“You do. You just needed a voice of reason to remind you that you’re the voice of reason in your family.”

Kathleen nodded. “Mom doesn’t need any more stress.”

“Neither do you,” Benson said gently. “Promise me you’ll tell Bernard tomorrow.”

“I will.”

—

When Kathleen went to talk to Lieutenant Bernard the next morning, he was out of the office. She spoke instead to the two detectives assigned to her father’s case.

What she didn’t know as that at the same time, Bernard was at a meeting downtown with an ADA and a parolee hoping to be discharged. The parolee, disgraced former State Senator Alex Muñoz, said he knew who killed Elliot Stabler, and wanted two things in exchange for the information he had to offer: first, an unconditional discharge from parole, and second, freedom for Rafael Barba.


	4. Chapter 4

Muñoz’s lawyer negotiated a deal with the homicide ADA: if the information he gave them led NYPD to a credible suspect in Stabler’s murder, he would be unconditionally released from parole. He’d left prison more than four years ago; his parole was supposed to continue for another five, well into 2024.

As for Rafael Barba no longer being considered a suspect, Muñoz’s second demand, Lieutenant Bernard couldn’t make any promises.

“I’m doing this for Rafael,” Muñoz insisted, and Bernard, who’d heard stories about the former state senator, had his doubts.

“When I was running for state senate, my campaign had to make nice with a drug kingpin. Nothing illegal, nothing that violates any statutes, just … politics. Six years ago, when the Manhattan DA and the feds sent me to prison, this man offered me protection, and I was desperate, so I took it, paid him out of a secret account. His name is Nevada Ramirez, and he’s the father of Elliot Stabler’s granddaughter.”

“We asked the family about custody disputes, and there are no court records,” Bernard said.

“The daughter was probably afraid to talk to you because if Ramirez murdered Stabler over a custody dispute —”

“A drug kingpin was that desperate for custody?”

“No. He was desperate not to have to pay child support, not to be on the courts’ radar.”

“All right,” the ADA said, “let us look into it.”

“I also know why you had a partial DNA match for Rafael when it’s probably Ramirez who killed Stabler.”

Bernard tried not to look intrigued.

“Ramirez and I also know each other through another source: Rafael Barba Sr. He was Rafael Sr.’s son. The younger Rafael, my friend, knew that his father had a secret second family who got all his money, who were supposed to get everything in the will, but never cared to find out who they were. Rafael Sr. wanted Nevada to take over running the Masucci ports for him, but Nevada wanted nothing to do with the old men in Ozone Park who slung slurs around, so he struck out on his own. Terrifying guy. Takes after his papi.”

“So what you’re saying is that you and Rafael Barba Sr. were close enough where he confided in you that Nevada Ramirez was his son.”

“Yes,” Muñoz said straightforwardly. “By now everyone should know I’m good at playing all sides. I don’t necessarily support all sides, I really just always wanted was best for my friends and my city, but I can get anyone to confide in me, including some very bad men.”

When he returned to the 27th Precinct that afternoon, Bernard was surprised to learn that Kathleen Stabler had come by with a similar story: Nevada Ramirez was angry with Maureen for pursuing child support, which would have put him on the courts’ radar. Kathleen believed that her father was murdered trying to protect Maureen and Nadia.

Bernard wondered if the motive for Stabler’s murder was much simpler than he and his detectives had originally believed. Ramirez, who hadn’t had an arrest on his record in fifteen years despite his drug monopoly and alleged involvement in at least four murders, wanted to stay off the judicial radar, and the Stablers posed a threat to that. 

On the day before New Year’s Eve, Barba and Calhoun came in to the precinct. Barba swore that although he’d known about his father’s secret family and had ill-advisedly worked with a Masucci associate to change the terms of the elder Rafael Barba’s will when he was 29 years old and desperately frightened and stupid, he never knew the identity of his half-brother and half-sister. 

Bernard didn’t say anything about his source, in part because he had questions about Alex Muñoz’s motives: was he really invested in exonerating Barba? How much of his revelation even had to do with his desire to be released from parole? The fact that Alex Muñoz knew who Rafael Barba Sr.’s other son was while the younger Barba didn’t seemed, at the very least, a bit off.

He would keep an eye on Muñoz, have his detectives find out if he contacted Barba.

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, NYPD detectives picked Nevada Ramirez up at Newark Airport when he was about to board a plane to the Dominican Republic. He had a one-way ticket. 

Calhoun stopped by SVU that afternoon to tell Benson how relieved she was that Barba was no longer considered a suspect.

“Send him my regards,” Benson said.

—

Barba was settling in to a New Year’s Eve alone in Rita Calhoun’s apartment with a book, the tv, a 24-year single-malt whiskey, and good Italian takeout that he thought he might have a slight appetite for, even though he hadn’t been hungry in a year and a half. Calhoun’s doorman called to tell him that he had a guest.

Calhoun herself was at a party that Barba had no interest in attending, especially because the attorneys who had any pull with the Bar would be too drunk to network, too sober to offer any hint of friendship. 

And besides, association with the now-famously corrupt former ADA wasn’t a good idea for any attorney in New York. 

The doorman told him that Olivia Benson was downstairs. Barba said to send her up, and waited by the elevator in the hall.

He wished his heart didn’t leap up when he saw her. He wished her presence didn’t still flood him with unwarranted joy.

Barba silently led her to the apartment. Once inside, she didn’t remove her coat. He could tell that she wasn’t planning to stay long. 

“I was on my way home and against my better judgement, wanted to see how you were doing.”

Barba’s eyes momentarily fluttered closed, and he tried to tell her he was all right, but when he opened his eyes again, there were tears on his lashes and no words on his tongue.

She reached out a hand and patted his arm. “I know,” she said, a hint of undeserved but welcome kindness.

“They have a suspect in custody and I’m free to go back to Miami.”

“You’re doing good work there, I hear.”

Barba looked at his feet. “I want to practice law again.”

“You are, in your own way.”

“Rita and I talked about petitioning the New York State Bar.”

She tilted her head in sympathy, but said nothing.

“You don’t think they’ll readmit me,” he guessed.

“I wouldn’t recommend getting your hopes up.”

“Join me for a drink? I have a small batch single-malt on the table.”

“How’d you get that?”

“Christmas present from Rita.”

Benson hadn’t removed her coat, and Barba knew that she was on her way out, that she would never stay for that glass of scotch, would never be his friend again in the way that she’d been his friend three years ago, and he couldn’t blame her.

But he missed her. He missed his friend, his squabbling partner, his champion.

Her hand was on his arm again. He wanted to hug her, but even if she let him, he knew he’d reflexively cling to her, and that wasn’t right, to cling so fiercely to someone you’d betrayed.

“I can’t stay, Rafa,” she said, and the sound of the once-familiar nickname brought fresh tears to his eyes. “I came to tell you I’m glad you’re not a suspect anymore, and I love you, but after what you did with the Householders, after the way you used SVU, the way you used our friendship, to do something so awful, so corrupt, I can’t trust you anymore.”

He opened his mouth to say _I love you_ , to return the three words she’d spoken so quickly in the middle of her declaration that she couldn’t trust him, but she cut him off with a “Don’t say it.”

“If I weren’t such a stupid, untrustworthy man,” he tried instead, “I would have loved you so, so much.”

“Rafael,” she said, carefully sounding out his full first name, “move on. For both of our sakes, please, move on.”

—

A week after he returned to Miami, Barba put in for a transfer to the Innocence Collective’s New York branch and began to file the paperwork that would allow him to petition the New York State Bar for readmission. In early February, two years to the day when he’d hastily departed, leaving everyone he cared about behind so they wouldn’t be complicit in his wrongdoing, he returned to New York, moving into a one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.

In the morning, he went to work, three subway stops from his new place. At 5 or 6, he returned to his apartment and stayed there until it was time to go back to work. Sometimes, mercifully, an attorney would ask him to stay late to help with a case.

He didn’t try to contact Benson, or his mother, or Eddie Garcia, or any of his former colleagues, understanding finally that forgiveness put too much of a burden on the people he’d betrayed. He hadn’t made a mistake; he’d deliberately manipulated the justice system to help Not My Decision get what they wanted on account of a favor he owed the mob. Forgiveness wasn’t a part of that equation.

Calhoun, whose aloof loyalty he didn’t understand, but very much appreciated — she wasn’t about to forgive him either, she was far too smart for that — helped him petition the Bar, and was by his side on the first day of spring, when he appeared before its committee leaders, who’d gathered in a small lecture hall at Hudson Law School to hear him make his case. 

“I am guilty of defrauding the New York City court system on behalf of an organization whose ideologies and goals I did not agree with, in service of a debt I owed the Masucci family, who helped me change a domestic abuser’s will so that his widow wouldn’t suffer any more than she already had. I committed this fraud in conjunction with the previous district attorney while I worked as the dedicated ADA for the Special Victims Unit. In the fall of 2018, I served 90 days in an upstate prison for this crime that I was guilty of. I am not seeking to mitigate or absolve myself of that guilt.”

He went on to describe his successes as a prosecutor, explaining: “There one thing I cam say for myself is that I never used my position as a prosecutor to push cases through on insufficient evidence. Although I attempted unprecedented legal strategies on occasion, I did not move forward until I felt that I had enough evidence to ethically make a case. Working for the Innocence Collective, I’ve learned just how many guilty verdicts make it past juries, and past appeals, on insufficient evidence.

“Only a few months ago, I was arrested for a murder I didn’t commit. There was insufficient evidence and a warrant that never should have been issued, but the assumption was made that my being guilty of corruption meant that I was also guilty of murder. This happens too frequently. I humbly request to be readmitted to the Bar so that I can work with the Innocence Collective in full capacity as an attorney. Thank you.”

He was surprised when, a week later, the Bar readmitted him. 

Calhoun brought him celebratory cupcakes. For the first time in almost two years, his appetite — which had been lost in prison as he awaited his fate at the hands of the few Munson-sympathetic COs still hanging around — had fully returned.

Back in the Bar’s good graces and promoted to attorney at the Innocence Collective, Barba felt like he was actually moving on. 

He returned to his apartment one evening at the end of his second week as an Innocence Collective attorney, his still-aching losses soothed by the temperate April day, and turned on the lights in his living room to find Nevada Ramirez sitting on the couch.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short one and my writing enthusiasm isn't 100% back yet, so please forgive any nonsense ;-) 
> 
> Will pick up soon in Chapter 6 with the trial and more ----- sources of reasonable doubt

Barba flinched, then, before his brain could fully register the horror of Nevada Ramirez sitting on his couch, carefully backed up towards the door. His reflexes were still too quick, too much on edge, from the ninety days he’d spent in prison awaiting his fate at the hands of whatever COs had remained sympathetic to Munson, far too quick, but perhaps in this rare instance hyper vigilance would save his life.

Ramirez was quicker. Without missing a beat, he crossed the living room, blocking Barba’s exit. He didn’t draw the gun clearly visible in the waistband of his jeans.

“We need to talk, Rafi,” the kingpin said.

Barba breathed deep, holding his hands out to Ramirez. “It may not matter to you that I’m your brother,” Barba said, “but it should matter to you that I’m your only hope for reasonable doubt.”

“You think I don’t know they didn’t clear you?” Ramirez said, his lips twisting into a sneer. “They already proved the guy had to have been shot and thrown into the river when you were in Miami. Your friends downtown want to make sure they have a good case against me. So, you’re representing me at my trial, and you’re making sure I don’t spend another day in jail.” Now he grinned, sarcastic and vicious in a manner that reminded Barba very much of his father, of _their_ father.

“Don’t you have your own lawyers?”

“Oh, Rafi.” Ramirez clicked his tongue. “My lawyers only take care of me for murders I actually did.”

“You sure you want to tell me that?”

“Soy invocable,” Ramirez hissed. “And we’ve got attorney-client privilege now, ‘cause you’re my attorney. But, see, Rafi, this time I didn’t do it.”

“When did they let you out on bail?” Barba asked, eyeing the door he’d never get to. His real question was _why_ they let Ramirez out on bail. 

“Yesterday. Had me in there for four months, more time than you had to spend inside for working with the old men. For the favor you paid them back so you could take the last of what me and my sister had from our father who only wanted to take real good care of us.” Ramirez laughed, loudly. “But I didn’t need any of Papi’s money. Papi owed his life to the old men in Ozone Park. I don’t.” More laughter, more mockery in his eyes. “You wanted to be a judge. You flushed yourself down the toilet for those old men. You’re the one who takes after Papi.”

“Let’s sit down,” Barba suggested, “and —”

“No, we’ll talk right here, and you’re gonna listen and not run for the door. I’ve got someone outside anyway. From what I hear, you won’t be missed.”

“So why did the judge grant bail?”

“‘Cause why the fuck would I kill Maureen’s daddy? He had nothing to do with my business. Maureen used to help with distribution, for all the forty-something ladies in Queens who pop a couple of oxy for their back like it’s nothing. Didn’t want my kid caught up in any of that, so I let Maureen out of our agreement. She knows how to keep her mouth shut.”

“I heard she was taking you to court.”

Ramirez clicked his tongue. “She’s smart, knows how to keep her mouth shut in this business, more than I can say for a lot of the others. It was her sister, the social worker, pushing for her to take me to court, so it was _official_. Maureen knows better. And me, I don’t touch anybody unless they fuck with my business.” 

“When was the last time you spoke to Maureen?”

“What do you care?”

“Mr. Ramirez,” Barba said, desperate to gain control of the situation, “do you want me to represent you or not?”

“Mr. Ramirez,” the kingpin echoed, letting a burst of air escape from his pursed lips. “You’re representing me whether you like it or not.”

“Then to effectively build your defense, I need to to answer my questions. When did you last speak to Maureen?”

Ramirez rolled his eyes. “More than a year. I don’t want anybody knowing that’s my kid, it’s not safe for the girl. Everything they’re saying, their witnesses, the sister, all bullshit. Somebody’s out to get me, and I don’t let that happen.”

“You’re going to come to my office tomorrow at the Innocence Collective,” Barba said, “and we’re doing this entirely on the books, because I just got readmitted to the Bar, and I’m not risking any more of my career on behalf of anything else connected to Rafael Barba Sr.”

“See you then,” Ramirez said, offering Barba a nod, but the sneer stuck on his face — a face not unlike his own — told Barba that it wasn’t quite over.

Ramirez pressed the palm of his hand to the doorknob. “I’ll be at your office tomorrow,” he said, “but you’re not gonna tell your NYPD friends about how I showed up here first, because otherwise I’ll have to pay a visit to Papi’s _esposa sufriente_.”

Barba lurched towards Ramirez, who firmly placed a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.

“If you’re unhappy with the results of your case,” Barba said, “you send your guys after me.”

“Rafi.” Another smirk, another dismissive laugh. “See you tomorrow.”

Ramirez left Barba alone in his apartment, but Barba wondered how alone he really was, given how much time Ramirez had likely spent in his living room and god knows where else. 

But he was going to represent Ramirez, enthusiastically and zealously, and not (only) because of the threats. 

Three years ago, when the Masuccis came to collect on their favor, Barba knew that what he was doing was wrong, and illegal, and could potentially destroy him and everyone he loved. This was different: terrified as he was, Ramirez’s _my lawyers only take care of me for murders I actually did_ and _I don’t touch anybody unless they fuck with my business_ , the possibility that Kathleen Stabler had made a grave mistake in her earnest suggestion that Maureen take Ramirez to court (as if everything could be resolved there), a mistake that provided an easy way in for a rival looking to frame Ramirez, led Barba to believe that Ramirez wasn’t guilty.

Or rather, led Barba to believe that Ramirez wasn’t guilty of this particular murder.

So, a zealous defense of Ramirez was the right choice, the ethical choice, even if the guy was a murderous asshole who’d threatened Barba’s mother. 

Ramirez was a piece of garbage.

But he probably hadn’t killed Stabler. 

The next afternoon, Barba met with Ramirez in a more formal setting, and explained to his bosses and colleagues why he’d taken on the case. He promised himself that whatever happened, he’d keep everything above board, and that if he failed to convince a jury that Ramirez wasn’t guilty of Stabler’s murder, he’d leave the country and take Lucia with him. He’d find a way. 

In court one morning for a different client, he ran into Benson, and wanted so much to tell her about what had transpired in his apartment, to explain himself, so that she wouldn’t think he’d gone completely off the rails. 

“Rafael,” she said sharply. The look in her eyes told him she already knew about Ramirez. 

He nodded and passed her in the hallway without a word.

She’d probably read his actions as continued affiliation with the Masuccis, as a betrayal of the Stabler women. He desperately wanted to explain himself, to tell his onetime friend that even trash can drug kingpins can be falsely accused of murder, that he really was seeking justice this time.

But instead he walked past her, ignoring her and letting her believe he was nothing more than a Masucci trash can himself, Rafael Barba Sr.’s son, Rafael-Barba-Senior-with-a-law-degree manipulating the justice system for gangsters. He had a reason: if Ramirez’s men were watching him, and they most certainly were, he didn’t want them to know that Benson was the one person he was desperate to explain himself to. He didn’t want Nevada Ramirez to know that Olivia Benson was someone he loved.


	6. Chapter 6

Whenever Barba gave an opening statement, he kept his eyes fixed on the jury. The first morning of Nevada Ramirez’s trial was no different; as Barba explained to the jury that they’d hear stories about a partial DNA match, a series of misunderstandings, and a very bad man who nevertheless hadn’t committed the specific crime he was accused of, he never turned his head once towards the bench or the gallery. 

As he wrapped up and headed back to the defense table, however, he noticed a familiar face: Olivia Benson, in the last row of the gallery, close to the door.

_No,_ he thought, _no, Liv, you can’t be here._

Ramirez had already implicitly threatened Lucia’s life, and if he believed for a second —

_You are still a stupid man, Rafael Barba._

He sat beside his client and let out a small sigh of relief, realizing that of course Benson wasn’t there for him. She was there for the Stabler family. 

_You are a stupid, selfish man_ , Barba reminded himself, remembering how she’d told him she loved him but after the way he’d used SVU and their friendship to commit acts of corruption, she couldn’t trust him anymore.

_For both of our sakes_ , she’d said, _please, move on_.

She was still sitting in the back of the gallery more than an hour later, when he cross-examined the prosecution’s first witness, Kathleen Stabler. He asked Kathleen if her sister Maureen had ever expressly told her that she wanted to take Ramirez to court over child support, and was immediately met with an objection from the prosecutor.

He turned his head to the side while he considered how to best rephrase the question, and, out of the corner of his eye, caught another familiar figure, a sight that generated a reaction halfway between a shudder and a flinch.

Alex Muñoz. 

Muñoz had been a part of the police investigation, the tip that led Lieutenant Bernard and his team away from Barba and towards Ramirez, but had not been on the witness list, presumably because of the deal that had ended his parole. In his defense research, Barba was horrified — but maybe not as surprised as he should have been — to learn that Muñoz knew that Ramirez was Rafael Barba Sr.’s son, while the younger Barba himself had no idea.

Of course he’d never wanted to know. 

There was no reason for Muñoz to be in court. In fact, on the surface it was a bad idea for him to be there he was risking the possibility that Barba would suddenly decide to subpoena him as a witness, and more importantly, he was risking the possibility that Ramirez would realize that Muñoz was the one who’d pointed NYPD in his direction.

Muñoz was bold and overconfident in his lies. Barba wondered how boldly he’d lied in order to get himself out of parole.

But framing a drug kingpin? That was beyond Muñoz. 

Still, Barba would have to do more research.

After the cross examination, Kathleen stepped down and walked to the back of the gallery, where she embraced Benson. The two women left together.

So Benson’s presence in the courtroom had never been about him.

Muñoz’s presence, he had a sinking feeling, was.

The judge called recess at 3, and it seemed likely that the jury would start deliberations after closing statements the next morning. This was not to be a month-long, media-circus trial. “You sure you don’t want to take a plea?” Barba asked Ramirez on their way out.

“I told you, I didn’t do it,” Ramirez insisted.

“Just reminding you the option is on the table.”

“Don’t you doubt me now, Rafi.”

Ramirez walked away, and almost as soon as he disappeared down the street, Muñoz appeared next to Barba.

“Not a good idea,” Barba said immediately.

“I’m looking out for you,” Muñoz said, his face somber.

Barba held up a hand. “You’re not, and because there’s still a chance you’ll be called as a surprise witness before closing statements tomorrow, you shouldn’t be talking to me.”

“They won’t call me.”

“What if I do?”

“And what purpose would that serve?”

“Reasonable doubt,” Barba said.

“I leveraged my knowledge about Ramirez’s connection to the Stabler family to reduce my unreasonably long parole, which was unreasonably long because you went in as hard as you did.”

“Bullshit, Alejandro.” Barba started to cross Foley Square and Muñoz trailed him. “I didn’t prosecute you, and I had nothing to do with the federal case.”

“You pointed the feds towards my indiscretions.”

“With a 15-year-old,” Barba said loudly.

“That’s not the sort of problem that gets a person —”

“You have people state jobs to keep them quiet.”

“Huh.” Muñoz shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky. “You really want to call me out for corruption, Rafael?”

“I was corrupt too. I’ve never said otherwise. Doesn’t lessen the degree of your corruption.”

“You bent the will of the justice system towards an organization that works really hard to convince ordinary people to make bad medical choices, and only got 90 days. Meanwhile, I was in for two years, would have been on parole for more than ten if I hadn’t come forward.” He cleared his throat. “And Rafael, you may not believe me, but I ultimately did this for you.”

“Bullshit,” Barba said again, allowing a sarcastic smirk to form on his face.

“There was a partial DNA match. You might have been found guilty.”

Barba raised an eyebrow. “You expect praise from me, Alejandro?”

“I expect you to believe me when I say that I was worried about you.”

“Alex,” Barba said, laying a hand flat against his former friend’s shoulder, “if my ordeal with Not My Decision and their mob connections taught me anything, it’s not to owe anyone any favors.”

“That’s fair,” Muñoz said, as if he was retreating. Barba was certain he wasn’t; Alex Muñoz didn’t retreat.

“You should not have been in court today. I’m sure the prosecutor agrees with me. Do not come to court tomorrow.”

Muñoz nodded in agreement, but Barba, as he walked away, was sure that the disgraced state senator would show up the next day anyway, front and center in the gallery.

—

Olivia Benson knew something that she wasn’t supposed to know.

Or, more specifically, a case from more than eight years ago, one of the first ones she’d worked with Amaro the summer when they weren’t sure if Stabler was gone for good, meant that she was in possession of information that she should have brought directly to the attention of Lieutenant Bernard. 

She was either stupid or overly forgiving or far too empathetic: when she learned that Barba was representing Ramirez, who had no connection to the Masuccis except that his father was Rafael Barba Sr., her detective gut told her two things —

First, Barba genuinely believed that Ramirez didn’t kill Stabler, and second, if the partial DNA match held any water at all, Rafael Barba Sr. most likely had a third son. His only grandson, his daughter’s boy, was dead, probably murdered on orders from Ramirez himself, according to one of Benson’s FBI contacts. 

She didn’t know why she was compelled to do such a deep dive, especially given that Ramirez was an awful man. 

No, she knew exactly why she was taking a deep dive: in her bones, she felt that Barba was still somehow a good man who loved the pursuit of justice, forced to betray everyone and everything he loved because of threats from the Masuccis, and because a long time ago his father had exercised even more abusive power by forcing him into a corner on his deathbed and from beyond the grave.

But she also feared romanticizing Barba’s transgressions because she didn’t want another Stabler.

_Don’t think ill of the dead_ , she could hear Stabler snidely warning her.

Back in 2011, she and Amor had investigated the case of a teenage boy who had been thrown off a bridge. Some DNA turned up under his fingernails — he’d fought hard — and the only match was to a disgraced ADA who’d murdered a former defendant who’d been found not guilty. The ADA, Kevin Mulrooney, was in prison at the time, and there were no other matches in the system, so SVU had no leads.

The feds took over the case because of a possible connection to an international drug ring and a local kingpin. Nevada Ramirez, Benson and Amaro learned, was likely the murderer. 

So, Benson realized, if Barba and Ramirez had similar DNA profiles, and Ramirez and Mulrooney had similar DNA profiles, then Kevin Mulrooney was likely Rafael Barba Sr.’s third son, and a possible suspect, a source of reasonable doubt. 

Mulrooney was out of prison, having served only seven years for a brutal murder. Benson wondered why his DNA was no longer in their system; her detectives had to talk to him only two years ago when his name came up in an investigation related to the widow of the man Mulrooney had murdered. Maybe, after he’d been cleared as a suspect in that case, his attorney had negotiated with someone at Centre Street or the NYPD to have his DNA file removed. 

Mulrooney, long since disbarred, was now working as a paralegal at a small tax law firm. Benson went to visit him. 

She should have told Bernard. She knew she was risking her job when she went to talk to Mulrooney, and she could see Barba’s once-kind eyes looking at her, seeing right through her, while he told her to trust her instincts.

Benson found Mulrooney at the front desk. He looked a lot like Barba, a few years younger, a little more hair, but the same bulbous, expressive green eyes. She identified herself and asked if they could talk in private. He led her into one of the lawyers’ offices.

“SVU,” he said, and let out a nervous laugh.

Barba rarely let that level of nervousness show; another difference between the two men who had no idea they were brothers.

Benson positioned herself near the door just in case but read Mulrooney’s face as far more confused than threatening.

“So you know why I’m here,” she tried.

Mulrooney cringed. “If this is about me and Sonny, it’s been over for more than a year.”


End file.
